anguage, and thus laying the foundation of his interest in
little-known tongues. John is now an ensign in his father's regiment.
'Ah! he was a sweet being, that boy soldier, a plant of early promise,
bidding fair to become in after time all that is great, good, and
admirable.' Ensign John tells his little brother how pleased he is to
find himself, although not yet sixteen years old, 'a person in authority
with many Englishmen under me. Oh! these last six weeks have passed like
hours in heaven.' That was in 1816, and we do not meet John again until
five years later, when we hear of him rushing into the water to save a
drowning man, while twenty others were bathing who might have rendered
assistance. Borrow records once again his father's satisfaction:

'My boy, my own boy, you are the very image of myself, the day
I took off my coat in the park to fight Big Ben,' said my
father, on meeting his son, wet and dripping, immediately after
his bold feat. And who cannot excuse the honest pride of the
old man--the stout old man?

In the interval the war had ended, and Napoleon had departed for St.
Helena. Peace had led to the pensioning of militia officers, or reducing
to half-pay of the juniors. The elder Borrow had settled in Norwich.
George was set to study at the Grammar School there, while his brother
worked in Old Crome's studio, for here was a moment when Norwich had its
interesting Renaissance, and John Borrow was bent on being an artist. He
had worked with Crome once before--during the brief interval that
Napoleon was at Elba--but now he set to in real earnest, and we have
evidence of a score of pictures by him that were catalogued In the
exhibitions of the Norwich Society of Artists between the years 1817 and
1824. They include one portrait of the artist's father, and two of his
brother George.[15] Old Crome died in 1821, and then John went to London
to study under Haydon. Borrow declares that his brother had real taste
for painting, and that 'if circumstances had not eventually diverted his
mind from the pursuit, he would have attained excellence, and left
behind him some enduring monument of his powers,' 'He lacked, however,'
he tells us, 'one thing, the want of which is but too often fatal to the
sons of genius, and without which genius is little more than a splendid
toy in the hands of the possessor--perseverance, dogged perseverance.'
It is when he is thus commenting on his brother's chara